Billy Wagner was the club’s closer when Craig Kimbrel joined the Atlanta Braves in 2010. Thirty-nine years old by season’s end, Wagner logged the last 37 of his 422 career saves, and he was as dominant as ever while doing so. Over 69-and-a-third innings, the left-hander fanned 104 batters while allowing just 38 hits.
Kimbrel, who was just 21 years old when he debuted that May, was every bit as overpowering. In 21 appearances comprising 20-and-two-thirds innings, the rookie right-hander fanned 40 batters while allowing just nine hits. Along the way, he recorded the first of what is now 395 saves.
I’ve had a Hall of Fame vote for three years, and in each of them I’ve put a checkmark next to Wagner’s name. This coming winter, I plan to do so again in what will be his penultimate year on the ballot (assuming he doesn’t get voted in; Wagner received 68% of support in his last go-round).
Kimbrel will soon celebrate his 35th birthday, and while the end of his career is fast approaching, he’s still pitching. Will he likewise be getting my vote once his name appears on the ballot? And what about Kenley Jansen? Still going strong at age 35, he’s also got 395 saves, tying him with Kimbrel for seventh on the all-time list, directly behind Wagner.
No hitter in the majors has gotten off to a hotter start this season than Adam Duvall, who joined the Red Sox this past winter via free agency and is currently carrying a slugging percentage above 1.000. Unfortunately, the 34-year-old center fielder won’t be available to star in Small Sample Theater for awhile because on Sunday while diving for a ball, he fractured his left wrist.
Duvall injured himself attempting to catch a bloop off the bat of the Tigers’ Spencer Torkelson in the ninth inning of Sunday’s game. Charging in from center field, he slid and appeared to make the grab, but his glove hand hit the grass awkwardly as he rolled over, and the ball squirted loose. Torkelson was credited with a single, while Duvall came up clutching his wrist, the same one that he sprained last July 23 while playing for the Braves. That time, he jammed his wrist against the wall in pursuit of a Shohei Ohtani fly ball and needed season-ending surgery to repair a torn tendon sheath.
This time, Duvall was diagnosed with a distal radius fracture in his left wrist. Such injuries generally mean a loss of six to eight weeks, but the Red Sox haven’t announced a timeline. Duvall underwent additional testing to determine if he would need surgery to set the fracture or repair tissue damage, but manager Alex Cora told reporters after Monday’s loss to the Rays that he’ll avoid that. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Boston Red Sox farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who might reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. I tend to be more inclusive with pitchers and players at premium positions since their timelines are usually the ones accelerated by injuries and scarcity. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.
This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Red Sox farm system. I like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in my reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows me to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a Red Sox prospect list that includes Mikey Romero, Eddinson Paulino, Wikelman Gonzalez and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »
David Ross was 38 years old and still strapping on the tools of ignorance when he was featured here at FanGraphs in February 2016. The title of the piece was David Ross: Future Big League Manager, and as many in the industry had suggested it would, that supposition soon came to fruition. The longtime catcher is currently embarking on what will be his fourth season at the helm of the Chicago Cubs. I recently asked Ross how he approaches the job philosophically now that he’s firmly in the trenches.
“My style — the way I approach being a manager — is leadership and direction, but I’m also still a player at heart,” Ross told me. “I understand what these guys are going through, competing for jobs and different roles. Communicating through that as a former player, someone who experienced it, I can relate to them. I try to keep a player’s mindset as part of my decision-making.”
Jed Hoyer was the club’s General Manager when the Cubs hired Ross following the 2019 season. I asked the now President of Baseball Operations about the process that informed that decision. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday offered a rare sighting, as Chris Sale took the mound in a game for the first time since last July 17 — even if it was only a Grapefruit League game against the Tigers. Limited to just 11 starts over the past three seasons due to injuries, the soon-to-be-34-year-old lefty took his first step towards both reestablishing his spot among the game’s top pitchers and helping to support a promising but rickety rotation that may be the Red Sox’s best hope for respectability this year.
Once upon a time, Sale ranked among the game’s most durable pitchers. From 2012-17, only Max Scherzer, R.A. Dickey and Jeff Samardzija threw more innings than his 1,230. Sale was limited to 27 starts in 2018 due to left shoulder inflammation, though he wobbled through the postseason while helping the Red Sox win the World Series. It’s been downhill ever since, as he pitched to a 4.40 ERA and missed the last seven weeks of the 2019 season due to left shoulder inflammation, then tore his ulnar collateral ligament the following spring and had Tommy John surgery. The Red Sox took a slow, deliberate approach to his rehab. He didn’t return to the majors until August 14, 2021, nearly 17 months after his surgery and two years and a day since his last regular season outing.
Sale made nine starts with mostly good results in 2021, posting a 3.16 ERA and 3.69 FIP while striking out 28.4% of hitters, but hopes that that performance would carry over into 2022 didn’t last long. About a week after the lockout ended, the Red Sox revealed that Sale had suffered a stress fracture in his right rib cage while throwing batting practice at Florida Gulf Coast University in mid-February; he wasn’t allowed to tell the team until the lockout ended. He finally made his first of four rehab starts on June 20, and returned to the Sox after a frustrating five-walk outing that was capped by him destroying a television and other equipment in what he later called “a 7-year-old temper tantrum.” On July 12 he finally took the mound for Boston, throwing five shutout innings against the Rays, but five days later, he didn’t make it out of the first inning against the Yankees, as a 106.7-mph Aaron Hicks line drive hit his left hand, fracturing his pinky. Around three weeks later, while the pinky was still healing, he broke his right wrist in a bicycle accident and needed season-ending surgery. Woof. Read the rest of this entry »
Alejandro Kirk slashed a solid .285/.372/.415 with 14 home runs and a 129 wRC+ last year in his first full big-league season. Moreover, the 24-year-old Toronto Blue Jays catcher drew 63 free passes while going down by way of the K just 58 times. His 10.7% strikeout rate was third best in the junior circuit, behind only Steven Kwan’s 9.4% and Luis Arraez’s 7.1%.
How similar of a hitter is Kirk to Arraez? I asked that question to Blue Jays manager John Schneider prior to Thursday’s game in Dunedin.
“When you talk about contact, not a lot of swing-and-miss, yeah, they’re similar,” replied Schneider. “There’s a little more damage potential with Kirky. But more walks than strikeouts is tough to do at any level, [especially] the big leagues. So, I think when it’s just strike zone command, on-base, and contact-ability, they are pretty similar.”
Arraez, now a member of the Miami Marlins, won the American League batting title with the Minnesota Twins while slashing .316/.375/.420 with eight home runs and a 131 wRC+. Following up on my initial question, I asked Schneider if Kirk has the potential to capture a title of his own. Read the rest of this entry »
Spring Training stats mean nothing, right? We all know better than to take the sample size of a couple of plate appearances and declare a position battle won, or a starting rotation slot solidified. That being said, these first few weeks of live baseball are our first real chances to see glimpses of the work that’s been done over the winter, to try to pick apart new swings and arm slots and mechanical tweaks that may unlock a next level of play. A few Grapefruit League home runs won’t turn a quad-A non-roster invitee into a Silver Slugger, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from the exhibitions.
This spring, Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran has been among those making a little noise early in camp. Duran showed up to Fort Myers with a lot to prove after a frustrating 2022 spent bouncing between Boston and the Triple-A WooSox. For the most part, he was unable to reproduce his minor league success in the majors, slashing .283/.349/.491 in 68 Triple-A games but .221/.283/.363 in 58 contests with the big league club, good for a .284 wOBA and a 78 wRC+. To go along with the troubles at the dish, he struggled to get comfortable in center field. He’s always had the raw speed to play any outfield position, and his reaction times were above average, but his arm is a weakness, and his route-running was among the worst in the league according to Statcast’s Route metric, which indicates that Duran lost 1.4 feet on outfield plays as a result of his route. Overall, that was enough for him to measure as well below average defensively.
What’s worse is that some of Duran’s more flagrant miscues came at particularly conspicuous times. The narrative nadir of the Red Sox’ disastrous season may have been a July 22 home game against the Blue Jays: Boston gave up a franchise-record 28 runs that night, four of which came around on a two-out pop fly off the bat of current campmate Raimel Tapia, which Duran lost in the lights, resulting in an inside-the-park grand slam. It was a perfect image of a bad team’s rock bottom. Read the rest of this entry »
As an East Coast dweller with a habit of watching West Coast broadcasts (and particularly Dodgers games) after the work is done and the kiddo tucked in, I’m well aware of Kenley Jansen’s evolution toward what we might politely call a more deliberate approach to pitching. Indeed, over the course of his 13-year major league career, he has evolved into one of the majors’ slowest workers on the mound. With this year’s introduction of a pitch clock, he spent the offseason working to adjust his delivery and is facing as much pressure as any pitcher to adapt to the new rules, though he’s hardly alone.
On Thursday, The Athletic’s Andy McCullough and Jen McCaffrey had some choice quotes from Jansen, who joined the Red Sox this year via a two-year, $32 million deal, on the subject of his tempo. Last year, while a member of the Braves, he saw his name atop an MLB Network graphic of the slowest-working pitchers. “I was so embarrassed,” he toldThe Athletic. “Like, dude, you’ve got to clean it up.”
“It drives me crazy,” he added. “Because I’m like, when did I get this slow?”
The topic is particularly relevant because Major League Baseball is adding a pitch clock this year, one that gives pitchers 15 seconds to begin their deliveries with the bases empty and 20 to do so with men on. MLB is also planning strict enforcement of the balk rule, because the aforementioned times require clarity on when a pitcher’s delivery starts, thus presenting an additional problem for Jansen.
The 35-year-old righty believes that the addition of a double swivel of his left (front) hip to start his delivery may have slowed his delivery down even as its addition catalyzed his resurgence. Stung by his reduced role in the 2020 postseason as the Dodgers finally won that elusive championship and hoping to regain velocity and command, he added the move in April ’21. By repeating a hip swivel that he’d previously introduced at the start of his delivery, he improved his balance, avoided drifting toward third base, and lengthened his delivery toward home plate. His results certainly improved: his average cutter velocity increased from 90.9 mph to 92.5, and his ERA fell from 3.33 to 2.22 (though his FIP and xERA barely budged). Last year, Jansen’s cutter averaged 92.2 mph, still faster than his 2018–20 velocities.
As you can see from the video above, the hip swivel is pretty subtle when viewed from the center field angle via which we typically watch pitchers, but the batter and umpire have a better view. That little movement matters because under the new rule, the clock stops at the start of the delivery, but what Jansen’s doing is a false start that can disrupt a hitter’s timing. Now in addition to speeding up his internal clock, he has to work on simplifying his delivery so as not to commit a balk.
While his hip swivel helps at least somewhat in explaining Jansen’s rebound in performance — mixing in his sinker and slider have helped as well — the data tell us he’s been throwing the brakes on his pace of work more or less since he assumed closer duties for the Dodgers in 2012, just three years after switching from catching to pitching and two years after reaching the majors. Last year, Statcast began publishing Pitch Tempo data, which measures the median time between pitch releases; not every pitch is accounted for, only those that were called strikes or balls. The Statcast measure differs from our lost-and-found Pace metric, which divides the time difference between the PITCHf/x timestamps of the first and last pitches of a plate appearance by the number of pitches in the PA minus one. Statcast also splits the data into into times with the bases empty and with men on base. Here’s what the data looks like for Jansen; by happy coincidence, the start of Statcast’s data coverage is the same year as his major league debut.
Jansen’s delivery times have generally been on the rise since he began pitching, with 2012, ’16, and last year standing out as points where he went from slow to slower to slowest. Pitchers as a group have been taking even longer between pitches over the same timespan, with the average with nobody on base increasing from 15.8 seconds in 2010 to 18.1 seconds in ’22, and from 22.2 seconds with nobody on in ’10 to 23.3 in ’22. Taking a page from contributor Chris Gilligan’s big-picture look at the attempts to improve the pace of play, here’s how the leaguewide tempo data looks alongside pace and time of game over the span of Jansen’s career:
Pace of Play Metrics
Season
Avg Empty
Avg Men On
Pace
Time of Game
2010
15.8
22.2
21.0
2:50
2011
15.8
22.2
20.9
2:51
2012
16.3
22.7
21.4
2:55
2013
16.7
23.1
21.9
2:58
2014
17.2
23.5
22.2
3:02
2015
17.6
24.2
23.2
2:56
2016
17.8
24.4
23.3
3:00
2017
17.3
23.5
22.7
3:05
2018
17.2
23.3
22.5
3:00
2019
17.7
23.9
22.9
3:05
2020
18.0
23.9
23.2
3:07
2021
18.3
24.3
23.7
3:10
2022
18.1
23.3
23.1
3:03
Note that last year reversed a years-long trend; the average time between pitches decreased relative to 2021, as did the length of the average nine-inning game. Those improvements have largely been attributed to the PitchCom signaling system, though two-year declines in strikeout and walk rates have helped as well.
While I could give you a pair of graphs comparing Jansen’s splits to the league averages, I chose attempt to index his splits (pitcher tempo divided by league tempo times 100) into what I’ll call Tempo+, which I think similarly gets the point across:
From 2012 to ’21, Jansen was around 30% above average with the bases empty and about 17% above average with men on, but last year he set highs in both categories, climbing to 42% above average with the bases empty and 35% above average with men on. Good thing he moved out of the Pacific time zone, or I’d have been even more sleep-deprived.
Anyway, among pitchers with at least qualifying 100 pitches with the bases empty in 2022, Jansen actually had only the third-longest time between pitches:
Jansen did edge Loáisiga for the highest percentage of slow pitches, with 22.3% of his offerings with the bases empty taking at least 30 seconds, compared to 21.2% for Loáisiga. Meanwhile, with men on base, Jansen took over the major league lead in average time…
… but took a backseat to Gallegos in percentage of slow pitches, 58.2% to 57.4%; Williams (54.6%) and Colomé (51.7%) were the only other pitchers who topped 50% under those conditions. Gallegos might be the heavyweight champion of dawdlers, as his 33.8 seconds with men on in 2021 is the highest mark of the past seven seasons, and his 26.5 seconds with the bases empty that same year ranks third behind only Rafael Dolis (27.2 seconds in 2020) and Chapman (26.9 seconds in 2021). Jansen’s former teammate, the infamously slow Pedro Báez, has the second-longest split with men on, 32.9 seconds in 2015, and shaved just one second off that the following year.
if I had six months to live, I'd spend it watching Pedro Baez throw an inning because it would feel like eternity
It’s important to point out that Pitch Tempo doesn’t directly line up with the new pitch timer, which starts when the pitcher receives the return throw from the catcher and ends once he begins his delivery. Statcast publishes a Timer Equivalent that just subtracts six seconds from the tempo measure. Jansen’s Timer Equivalent measures of 19.6 seconds with the bases empty and 25.6 seconds with men on base would both constitute what former teammate Clayton Kershaw cheekily called “a shot clock violation” given the new regulations.
In terms of cleaning it up, Jansen is hardly alone. Using 100-pitch cutoffs for each split, last year 81 out of 523 qualifiers (15.4%) had timer equivalent averages over 15 seconds with the bases empty, and 56 out of 467 (12.3%) had averages over 20 seconds with men on. In both categories, the vast majority of the pitchers above those thresholds were relievers. In fact, only five pitchers who made at least half a dozen starts last year had timer equivalents greater than 15 seconds with the bases empty: Shohei Ohtani (15.7), Tylor Megill (15.3), JP Sears, Corbin Burnes, and Michael Kopech (15.1 apiece). Meanwhile, 16 starters had timer equivalents of at least 20 seconds with men on base, led by Montas, the only pitcher who cracked the tables above:
In an odd coincidence, not only is Montas here but also Sears, one of the pitchers he was traded for last August, and just missing the cut with an average right at 20 seconds is another, Ken Waldichuk. To be fair, Montas was bothered by shoulder problems that sent him to the injured list late last year and resulted in surgery earlier this week; his 28.0-second tempo average with men on base was 1.5 seconds higher than in ’21, suggesting he might have been trying to give himself a little extra time to recharge between pitches.
Indeed, that’s the general theory for the increased time between pitches, particularly for relievers; they’re throwing short stints at maximum effort and so need a bit of extra time to get that velocity to where it can have the greatest effect. FiveThrityEight’s Rob Arthur previously found that every second of delay adds .02 mph to average fastball velocity, which is to say that waiting 10 seconds can add 0.2 mph. Earlier this week at Baseball Prospectus, Darius Austin took a deeper look at the tempo-velocity link in light of the rule change, particularly searching for pitchers able to avoid losing velocity while improving their tempo from beyond the new clock limits to more acceptable times:
[P]itchers in the slower tempo group were 32 percent more likely to have increased their velocity with runners on. It’s the bases empty comparison that shows the notable difference here, though: only 24.3% (17 of 70) pitcher seasons saw an increase in average fastball velocity accompanying a reduction in time between pitches. By contrast, 41.4% of the pitchers who took more time on the mound added something to their fastball, making it over 70% more likely that fastball velocity increased relative to those who sped up between deliveries.
Particularly as he’s now 35 years old, Jansen is at least well aware of the continuous work it takes to adjust, but maintaining his effectiveness while adhering to the new rules is as big a challenge as he’s faced on the field. Here’s hoping he can get time on his side.
Sometimes I dream about a life as a scout, traveling around the world watching baseball players in person for the first time. That’s not reality for me, though. Instead, I’m limited to a dozen or so games a year in person and many more on my television. But every now and then, I get a remnant of that in-person feeling when watching on TV and can recall the performance pitch by pitch. Those are special in their own way. This year, one of those came in a mid-September game when Brayan Bello took on the Yankees in Fenway Park.
For the first time since his call-up in July and after a rough patch to kick off his big league career, Bello was on a nice run of success, with back-to-back starts of five or more innings. And over five innings, he was solid again against his team’s biggest rival, racking up 14 whiffs, striking out six and not yielding a single run. Through a combination of four-seamers, sinkers, changeups, and sliders, he stifled the Yankees’ lineup two times through the order. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Yu Darvish’s extension, then continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Los Angeles Angels (10:11) with The Athletic’s Sam Blum and the Boston Red Sox (59:32) with The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, plus a Past Blast (1:47:29) from 1967, an impromptu chat between Ben and former MLB umpire Joe West about whether/why West edited his own Wikipedia page (1:50:12), and a few follow-ups (2:11:42).
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